Information printed on paper or on another equivalent printable carrier is read by the reader in form of newspapers, magazines, brochures, books etc. This kind of printed information is characterized by content and form, whereby the contents are to be understood as the actual printing and the form as the quality of paper, the format, the type of binding etc. The reader normally considers the content as primary characteristics and the form as secondary characteristics. Therefore it obviously does not concern the reader if both characteristics are firmly coupled to each other and only one or the other is free to choice. An example of an exception from this coupling of content and form are books which are available to the reader either as paperbacks or as hardbacks. However, in most cases with a given content the form cannot be selected by the reader at all but it is definitively predetermined by the topicality of the content and the length of time the content remains topical, by the size of the edition, by the price which a certain public is prepared to pay for the content and by the available manufacturing facilities with which the printed information is produced.
Further important characteristics of printed information are the place and time in which it becomes accessible to the reader. This is especially valid for printed information which is only of importance for a short time such as is represented, among many others, by newspapers and magazines. It lies in the interest of all producers of topical printed information to make information available to the reader wherever possible and as topical as possible. This is of an increasing importance to producers of printed information in particular to those who produce newspapers and magazines since information in printed form has to compete more and more against easily obtainable, directly offered and delivered not printed information such as radio, television and similar media.
According to the state of the art, the way of information via printed media requires a lot of time and must cover large distances (from one locality to another) and additionally requires a lot of work. Information to be printed is recorded (in writing) in a stage preliminary to the printing and organized (arranged and laid out on pages, sheets etc. in a predetermined order). These days the preliminary stage is normally carried out with electronic means. The organized information is then transferred to printing plates which are placed on printing machines. By means of printing machines the information is printed onto paper sheets or quasi endless paper webs and thus multiplied to mostly very high numbers. The printed paper is then further processed, i.e. folded trimmed, gathered, stitched, bound etc., the further processing possibly comprising an intermediate storage. The finished printed products produced in the further processing are, possibly after further intermediate storage, organized to form shipping units and are distributed by transport, two steps which are often carried out several times (manufacturer, distributor, retailer, customer). At the end of the process the printed information ends in the hand of a reader who has obtained the printed information via a corresponding "order".
In most cases the "order" of the reader for obtaining printed information is given to a retailer (bookseller, news agent) on the marketing front or to a publisher (subscription), whereby the retailer or the publisher respectively is in possession of the printed information desired by the reader due to having given corresponding orders to the distributor or printer respectively.
A direct order from the reader to the printer would avoid a lot of over-production which is caused by the premature nature of the orders of the non-end-customers but it would lead to intolerable delay or would lead to an immense increase in capacity for preventing such delays and therefore, to drastically higher prices for printed products. If in addition the reader would want to determine the content to a much higher degree he would have to direct his order to the preliminary stage, which is not imaginable with the current process and with the means of manufacture currently used for producing printed topical information. This kind of procedure is just not possible.